“Are Cats (Felis Catus) from Multi-Cat Households More Stressed? Evidence from Assessment of Fecal Glucocorticoid Metabolite Analysis”, 2013-09-08 ():
Feline stress was investigated in terms of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites.
Cats were selected from multi-cat and single-cat households.
Fecal glucocorticoids did not vary as a function of feline housing condition.
Fecal glucocorticoids did not vary as a function of feline personality.
Young cats in multi-cat households had lower glucocorticoid metabolites.
Given the social and territorial features described in feral cats, it is commonly assumed that life in multi-cat households is stressful for domestic cats and suggested that cats kept as single pets are likely to have better welfare. On the other hand, it has been hypothesized that under high densities cats can organize themselves socially thus preventing stress when spatial dispersion is unavailable.
This study was aimed at comparing the general arousal underpinning emotional distress in single housed cats and in cats from multi-cat households (2 and 3–4 cats) on the basis of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (GCM) measured via enzyme immunoassay (EIA). GCM did not statistically-significantly vary as a function of living style (single, double or group-housing); highly stressed individuals were equally likely in the 3 groups.
Young cats in multi-cat households had lower GCM, and overall cats that tolerate (as opposed to dislike) petting by the owners tended to have higher GCM levels. Other environmental aspects within cat houses (eg. relationship with humans, resource availability) may play a more important role in day-to-day feline arousal levels than the number of cats per se.
…Single-housed cats, as opposed to group living cats, may be more susceptible to some of the negative effects of human activity in the home environment.11 Indeed, interaction with owners in the form of petting was linked to arousal levels in the studied cats. Those considered by the owners to “tolerate” petting (as opposed to “enjoying” or “disliking” it) had higher GCM concentrations. It may be that those that overtly dislike the activity are avoided or manage to avoid it, unlike those who tolerate it. Caution is warranted though with this hypothesis since there were only 4 cats in the category “disliking” while 13 in the category “tolerating” and 85 “enjoying”.
[These results seem generally uninterpretable. They are being sliced a dozen ways in complicated multi-way interactions despite tiny n, the correlations claimed for the GCMs make little sense to me & make me wonder if GCMs are an index of cat stress at all, and the authors do not actually report any meaningful statistics or summaries of the data—forget helpful scatter plots, there’s not even a first-order correlation table or linear model, little but a sea of F-statistics of unmotivated tests conducted in the worst p-value hacking fashion. Naturally, not only is the data not provided in a supplement, there’s no hint of it being provided anywhere…]